Generally, washing machines are home appliances that remove various dirt attached clothes, bedding, cloth items and the like (hereinafter, laundry) by using both friction of water currents caused by rotation of a drum and a shock applied to the laundry. Automatic laundry machines released recently may automatically perform a series of cycles, for example, a washing, rinsing and dry-spinning cycle, without a user's manual operation.
Recently, drum type laundry machines have getting popular more and more, because they have the heightened little trouble of wrinkles and tangling of laundry in comparison to pulsator type laundry machines having a tub rotated in a state of mounted vertically.
As a structure thereof will be schematically described, such a drum type laundry machine includes a cabinet defining an external appearance thereof, a tub mounted in the cabinet to hold wash water therein, a cylindrical-shaped drum provided in the tub to hold laundry therein. Here, the tub is supported by a damper and a spring and the drum receives a driving force from a driving assembly to wash the laundry.
The drum type laundry machine having the structure mentioned above cannot help generating vibration because of a rotational force thereof and eccentricity of the laundry when rotated to wash and dry-spin the laundry introduced therein. The vibration generated by the rotation of the drum is transmitted outside via the tub and the cabinet.
Because of that, the spring and the damper should be provided between the tub and the cabinet to dampen vibration generated between the tub and the cabinet and to prevent the vibration of the drum from being transmitted to the tub and next to the cabinet.
Such the drum type laundry machine mentioned above are usually installed in existing installation environments, for example, sink or built-in environments, not installed in auxiliary space independently. As a result, the size of such the drum type laundry machine has to be limited corresponding to its installation environments.
It is limited to change the inner structure of the above conventional drum type laundry machine because of the structure including the spring and damper to dampen the vibration between the tub and the cabinet and also it is limited to change the size of the laundry machine itself because its installation environments are limited.
In the meanwhile, researches and developments for increasing the washing capacity of the laundry machine have been in progress quite a lot recently to increase washing efficiency and user convenience. However, it is difficult in the limited conditions of the conventional drum type laundry machine to increase the size of the tub in order to increase the washing efficiency.
As a result, development of laundry machines having a diversified structure capable of increasing the washing efficiency has been required.